Scott McNealy – Gigaomhttp://gigaom.com
The industry leader in emerging technology researchSat, 17 Feb 2018 13:00:39 +0000en-UShourly1Scott McNealy’s top 10 signs “your CIO isn’t ready for the modern web”http://gigaom.com/2013/08/08/scott-mcnealys-top-10-signs-your-cio-isnt-ready-for-the-modern-web/
http://gigaom.com/2013/08/08/scott-mcnealys-top-10-signs-your-cio-isnt-ready-for-the-modern-web/#commentsThu, 08 Aug 2013 23:41:07 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=677978How’d I miss this? Earlier this summer, Sun Microsystems(s orcl) co-founder Scott McNealy trotted out an old chestnut — a top ten list — on how you can tell your CIO is clueless about the modern web.

A quick sampler from his talk at ForgeRock Open Identity Stack Summit: Your CIO is web-dopey if he thinks Big Data is a rapper; that COBOL programming is prerequisite for all new hires; and considers Computer Associates an open-source software company.

There is also a major Apple (s aapl) diss. But no Sparc jokes. Check it out.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2013/08/08/scott-mcnealys-top-10-signs-your-cio-isnt-ready-for-the-modern-web/feed/6USVP, UPS and Scott McNealy pump $18M into machine-learning startup Skytreehttp://gigaom.com/2013/04/30/usvp-ups-and-scott-mcnealy-pump-18m-into-machine-learning-startup-skytree/
http://gigaom.com/2013/04/30/usvp-ups-and-scott-mcnealy-pump-18m-into-machine-learning-startup-skytree/#commentsTue, 30 Apr 2013 16:30:15 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=640909Machine learning is everywhere these days as companies and organizations find themselves trying to make sense of data sets far too large and complex for the human brain alone. On Tuesday, Skytree cashed in on the hype with with an $18 million Series A round led by U.S. Venture Partners along with delivery giant UPS and Sun Microsystems co-founder and former CEO Scott McNealy. Skytree launched in February 2012 with $1.5 million in seed funding.

Skytree, for its part, sells a product called Skytree Server that lets users run a wide variety of machine learning algorithms across whatever data they have. It might be an oversimplification, but Skytree is essentially a souped-up version of statistical-analysis packages like SPSS or SAS that’s designed to run fast — and, more importantly — without sampling across a scale-out server architecture. In March, the company also rolled out the beta version of a new product called Adviser that can run on a laptop and walks more-novice users through the analysis of their data, including what methods were used and why, and whether the findings are statistically significant.

I suspect we’re just seeing the opening salvo in what will be a rush to fund machine learning startups over the next couple of years. Skytree is among a number of increasingly promising startups in the space, including (but certainly not limited to) Ayasdi and Quid. As more individuals see the promise of machine learning and get skilled in applying it to their particular problems and datasets — as UPS apparently has — it could become become one of the go-to analytic methods in the big data era.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2013/04/30/usvp-ups-and-scott-mcnealy-pump-18m-into-machine-learning-startup-skytree/feed/1This week in the Oracle/Google trial: Week 2http://gigaom.com/2012/04/27/this-week-in-the-oraclegoogle-trial-week-2/
Fri, 27 Apr 2012 20:01:02 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=515257One of the biggest trials in the recent history of the tech industry is in full swing, as Oracle (s orcl) and Google (s goog) slug it out in downtown San Francisco over whether Google pilfered Oracle’s Java technology to develop Android.

Stick and move: Early in the week, Android chief Andy Rubin and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt borrowed the same strategies used by their colleagues during the first week of trial, uttering things like “I do not recall” fairly often. But they both agreed that Google believed its arrangement with Sun was legal, an opinion that would be bolstered later in the week. (Wired)

Patent denied: Oracle wrapped up its presentation of the copyright phase of the trial on Tuesday, but was dealt a blow on Wednesday regarding the upcoming patent phase of the trial. Judge William Alsup denied an Oracle petition to reinstate one of the five patents that were barred from the trial after they were deemed invalid upon re-examination by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. After the PTO changed its mind on one key patent, Oracle hoped to get it back into play, but the judge ruled it was too late. (Groklaw PDF)

Show us the money: Google was forced to release as evidence a 2010 presentation on the financial picture for Android, including projections through 2013 for revenue and profit. The documents showed that Google was overly ambitious with its expectations for its Nexus direct-to-consumer plans, revenue from Google Music, and revenue from Android app sales. However, the documents also revealed that Android earns Google quite a bit of ad revenue, and that the company’s future projections for ad revenue were based on a much more conservative expansion of Android and smartphones in general than what has actually come to pass. (The Verge)

Sun rises and sets: Two former Sun executives presented very different impressions of how Sun viewed the APIs (application programming interfaces) at the heart of this trial. Jonathan Schwartz, CEO at the time Sun was purchased by Oracle, was called to the stand by Google and testified that Sun thought the Java APIs should be open and available to anyone. However, Scott McNealy, who co-founded Sun and served as CEO for decades, was called to the stand by Oracle and said Java contained “lots of intellectual property.” (CNET and ZDNet)

What’s next: Closing arguments in the copyright phase are expected to be delivered on Monday, after which the jury will deliberate on the central question of whether Google should have obtained a license from Sun in order to use the Java APIs included with the original version of Android. Should they find in favor of Oracle, damages will be decided after the patent portion of the trial kicks off.

]]>WayIn takes on Twitter-based voting with TwitPollshttp://gigaom.com/2012/04/12/wayin-twitpolls/
http://gigaom.com/2012/04/12/wayin-twitpolls/#commentsThu, 12 Apr 2012 13:00:39 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=510171So WayIn — it’s that startup from former Sun (s ORCL) head honcho Scott McNealy that is designed to allow you to create and respond to instant polls about, well, anything you want. It launched with a consumer-facing website and mobile applications and somehow (probably based on the former success of McNealy) has managed to rope in more than $20 million in two rounds of funding since then.

But I’ve never actually known anyone to use it, outside of those who sat in on that initial press demo, and a quick peek through the app today shows that the poll-creation is evidently being dominated by some serious anti-Obama libertarian interest groups and voters, some race car fans, the Washington Capitals and, well… McNealy himself. So it didn’t quite live up to expectations.

But, WayIn’s got back-end technology for creating those polls, and those polls don’t necessarily have to live in the app that no one uses. That is probably why WayIn is announcing TwitPolls, the creatively named platform for distributing polls on — you guessed it — Twitter.

TwitPolls will let sports teams, brands, TV producers and ad agencies build Twitter polls and measure voting in real time, increasing interaction and building loyalty with fans. For the fans, polls look the same as any other tweet that comes from a brand’s Twitter account — and responding to the poll with a certain hashtag will count as a vote. The platform uses Twitter’s API to weed through the noise of certain hashtags to directly link responses to questions that are asked through TwitPolls system.

The service is launching with a freemium model, initially letting anyone to create a poll on Twitter for free. But it’s got some bells and whistles and extra features that it’s willing to extend to enterprises — stuff like leader boards, additional games or customized charts and graphs — for a fee. For WayIn, that’ll provide a path to monetization — particularly as McNealy can work his rolodex to get sports teams, TV programmers and other brands on board.

Of course, there are some companies already doing social TV polling, but most of those — like Yap.tv or Loyalize, which was recently acquired by Function(x). And then there’s big data companies, which are making direct response polling obsolete by measuring sentiment from social messages. But few have created an end-to-end platform for enabling users to respond to brands directly in Twitter, without having to use another website or app. Let’s see if WayIn succeeds where others have failed.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2012/04/12/wayin-twitpolls/feed/1Scott McNealy’s Wayin nets $14M in Series B fundinghttp://gigaom.com/2012/02/27/scott-mcnealys-wayin-nets-14m-in-series-b-funding/
Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:37:39 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=490302Wayin, the social networking startup launched by Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy, just closed $14 million in Series B financing, bringing its total backing to $20 million. The network, which as a forum for users who want to discuss and vote on — well, just about anything — launched on Twitter last June.

U.S. Venture Partners led the round, and USVP partner Rick Lewis is joining the board of Denver-based Wayin. USVP joins an interesting roster of investors, including enterprise software company TIBCO; Silicon Valley law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati; former head of Microsoft Business Solutions and McNealy classmate Doug Burgum; Hollywood producer Burt Sugarman; and sportscaster Jim Gray.

As McNealy told GigaOMlate last year, it’s easier to raise money if you have a good rolodex. Starting Wayin “was actually a little easier probably than it should have been,” he said. Early on, the startup was able to rake in $6.3 million in investment without even tapping the VC community, McNealy said at the time.

At launch time, GigaOM’s Ryan Lawler described the service as a website and mobile application that let users easily create and vote on polls, follow other users and share opinions. Frequent users get points for creating and voting on polls.

Clearly, social networks — especially Twitter and Facebook — are hugely influential. Companies pay good money to analyze and parse these streams of data to perform sentiment analysis, which is something McNealy has acknowledged Wayin intends to cash in on. Whether or not Wayin can become a data source on the level of Facebook or Twitter, however, is up in the air.

]]>My resolution: reinvent the display–againhttp://gigaom.com/2011/12/30/my-resolution-reinvent-the-display-again/
Fri, 30 Dec 2011 08:01:24 +0000http://gigaom2.wordpress.com/?p=462761Scott McNealy on the startup experiencehttp://gigaom.com/2011/12/27/from-sun-to-wayin-scott-mcnealy-on-the-startup-experience/
http://gigaom.com/2011/12/27/from-sun-to-wayin-scott-mcnealy-on-the-startup-experience/#commentsTue, 27 Dec 2011 22:00:21 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=461235It’s not 1982 anymore, and Scott McNealy is no longer one of the many relatively unknown entrepreneurs trying to make it big with a Silicon Valley startup. Twenty-nine years after co-founding Sun Microsystems (s orcl) — a company that once boasted a $200 billion market cap — McNealy is a known commodity in the Valley, and that makes life a lot easier when it’s time to launch a new venture.

I recently spoke with McNealy as part of GigaOM’s special New Year’s package, and a portion of that interview went up this morning (my favorite quote from the piece: “What Steve Jobs understood was that he was more like Calvin Klein than he was like Andy Bechtolsheim.”). But the post doesn’t cover the entirety of our conversation, specifically McNealy’s thoughts on launching his new company, WayIn, as an IT celebrity and a proven enterprise CEO.

According to McNealy, knowing how venture capital works and knowing seemingly everyone in California makes for an entirely different experience. “It [WayIn] was actually a little easier probably than it should have been,” McNealy told me. “I keep telling our folks, ‘You know, you’re gonna have to keep the intensity level up.’”

Just flip through the Rolodex

The launch was relatively easy, he explained, because McNealy, who serves as chairman of the board, and the rest of his who’s-who board are very well-connected. McNealy, for example, personally called AT&T (s t) CEO Randall Stephenson, and now the WayIn app will be built into 12 or 13 million U-Verse set-top boxes.

Ditto for PGA president Tim Finchem, who got WayIn running on the President’s Cup website. To get WayIn incorporated into the Los Angeles Kings’ website, McNealy had to take the extra step of calling a friend who knows the team well.

“That seems kind of like cheating,” McNealy said. “It’s just been a series this year of reconnecting with all these people I know and connecting the WayIn to these folks.”

Contrast that to the early days of Sun: “I remember a year and a half into it, we finally got a one-line mention in Fortune magazine, I think it was, and we were all excited.”

Getting venture capital right

WayIn was also able to raise $6.3 million without seeking out VC funding, McNealy said, which has serious benefits for shareholders. “Raising money was very hard to do [when Sun launched], and we gave away most of the company to the venture capitalists,” he said. “They’re the ones who really made out like bandits on the company.”

“What [venture capitalists] want to do is get a company that’s valued at $4 million, give it two [million dollars], and own half the company, he added. “And we’re kind of beyond that day one.”

Not that McNealy is anti-venture-capital. Sun’s early investors such as John Doerr, Dave Marquardt and Doug Boyles added a lot of value, McNealy said, “but they extracted a lot of value in return.” WayIn itself likely will raise VC money in its Series B round, McNealy said, it just has the luxury of doing it on its own terms to a larger degree than most startups do.

Some things never change

One shouldn’t mistake McNealy’s honesty about WayIn’s experience, connections and cash with cockiness, however. The social-mobile space in which WayIn plays is quite different from the enterprise IT world in McNealy made his name and fortune, and all the contacts in the world won’t make up for a short-sighted business plan.

“The real key is to make sure we use all of those assets efficiently and effectively,” McNealy said, “and we’re really taking a big enough swipe at the market to be revolutionary and not just evolutionary.”

]]>http://gigaom.com/2011/12/27/from-sun-to-wayin-scott-mcnealy-on-the-startup-experience/feed/312 tech leaders’ resolutions for 2012http://gigaom.com/2011/12/27/12-for-2012/
http://gigaom.com/2011/12/27/12-for-2012/#commentsTue, 27 Dec 2011 08:01:12 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=458280Lose your love handles; call your Mom more often; get that promotion – if you’re like many of us, you’re already thinking over some New Year’s resolutions that will make you a better “you” in 2012. But how are the tech industries’ thought leaders approaching the new year? We asked 12 of them for their resolutions, and will publish one a day starting on December 27th and running until January 7th. Check back here to watch them unfold and get some advice from some of the tech industry’s most well-known names.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2011/12/27/12-for-2012/feed/42Scott McNealy’s new venture WayIn makes everything a gamehttp://gigaom.com/2011/10/05/scott-mcnealy-wayin/
Thu, 06 Oct 2011 03:35:21 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=416555Sun Microsystems (s ORCL) co-founder Scott McNealy has a new venture, but surprisingly, it’s not about building big hardware or enterprise software. It’s a new social startup called WayIn that’s focused on building a community of users that can vote and comment on pretty much anything.

WayIn launched with a consumer-facing website and mobile applications with a super-simple login process, and the ability to create and vote on polls, follow other users and share opinions both on the service and other social networks. Once you’ve connected with a couple of other users, you can see questions and polls that they have suggested in your stream, and you can also see suggested polls based upon popularity, live events or topics of interest. In true gamification fashion, users get points for creating and voting on those polls, and there’s the promise of rewards — real and virtual — for the most active users.

The ultimate goal is to be ubiquitous: WayIn has applications for the iPhone, iPad (s aapl) and Android (s goog) mobile devices. It will also hook into social networks like Twitter and Facebook, and it will have an app on Facebook. But WayIn’s plans to be everywhere don’t stop there; it also hopes to have its own set of widgets and the same type of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (s LNKD) sharing buttons that have become common on publisher sites around the world.

But make no mistake: While the app is being offered to consumers, the real customers here are marketers, brands and Fortune 500 companies to which WayIn will be able to provide invaluable sentiment data. What McNealy & Co. is actually selling is big data about consumer interests. So far, the pitch is resonating: WayIn is launching with partners like the Republican National Convention, the NHL’s L.A. Kings and Playboy. McNealy promises another 20 or so partners that will be announced soon.

McNealy is chairman of the venture, but it’s being run by CEO Tom Jessiman, who has been working on sports portals like Sportsline (prior to being acquired by CBS) (s CBS) and recently PicksPal. Still, while others run the day-to-day operations, McNealy is happy to help open doors for the fledgling startup, in which he is also the largest investor. That means making phone calls to some senior execs at old Sun customers, and telling them he has a way to find out more about their customers.

The board is also made up of some big players, like Greg Jamison, president and CEO of the NHL’s San Jose Sharks, who McNealy says knows pretty much every franchise owner in sports. TV producer Burt Sugarman, who was behind iconic shows like The Newlywed Game, is also involved and making connections in Hollywood.

WayIn has raised a total of $6.3 million, including a $5 million Series A round in June. The company is based in Colorado and has more than 35 employees, made up mostly of engineers, according to McNealy. That includes a number of former Sun execs and engineers, like Vasa Dasan, distinguished engineer at Sun, who is the startup’s CTO.

]]>Scott McNealy: Meg Whitman will be good for HPhttp://gigaom.com/2011/09/23/scott-mcnealy-meg-whitman-will-be-good-for-hp/
http://gigaom.com/2011/09/23/scott-mcnealy-meg-whitman-will-be-good-for-hp/#commentsFri, 23 Sep 2011 19:59:21 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=410856There are a lot of naysayers when it comes to the appointment of Meg Whitman as the new chief executive of the beleaguered technology giant, Hewlett-Packard (s HPQ). Scott McNealy, the co-founder and ex-CEO of Sun Microsystems, isn’t one of them. He believes that Whitman would be a good CEO for HP.

“I am a big fan of Meg Whitman and she surrounds herself with good people,” said McNealy in a phone interview. He argued that she will bring much-needed stability. “I am bullish on Meg, but not bullish on how HP got there.” HP has come under extreme criticism and much of it has been directed at its board of directors, who appointed Leo Apotheker as the CEO of HP, 11 months ago. He decided to get rid of HP’s PC business and at the same time spent a majority of HP’s cash on the poorly received acquisition of Autonomy.

“She understands tech, even though she didn’t come from the computer industry. Heck, even Lou Gerstner (ex-CEO of IBM) didn’t come from the computer business,” McNealy said. The past year notwithstanding, McNealy points out that with the right leadership and efforts companies can make a comeback, pointing to Oracle (s ORCL) and Apple (s AAPL), two companies that were looking into an abyss at some point in their life. McNealy argued that HP has a great management team and its printer/ink business is a cash cow that can be very helpful in any comeback.

When I brought up the fact that during the last couple of years at eBay, Whitman came under heavy criticism for her decisions and management style, Scott pointed out that being a CEO is a tough job and often things and people go through cycles. “Even Tiger Woods goes through a slump,” he said. McNealy says that many of Whitman’s decisions including appointment of CEO John Donahue is part of the reason why eBay has weathered the storm and is back on track.